ricky ponting

Born: 19.12.1974
State: Tasmania
Tests: 110
Role: Middle-order batsman
Bat: Right-hand
Bowl: Right-arm medium
Bat Average: 59.29
Bowl Average: 46.20

Only three men have more Test centuries than Ricky Ponting. And one of those - Steve Waugh, Ponting's predecessor as Australia captain - firmly expects the Tasmanian to end his career as the game's leading run scorer.

Ponting made his debut back in 1995 at the age of 20, and hit 96 before being harshly adjudged lbw in an innings victory over Sri Lanka. He's hardly looked back, accruing almost 9,000 runs at over 58 and a strike rate approaching 60 runs per 100 balls.

Ponting is perhaps the finest strokemaker in the game at present - Kevin Pietersen describes him as a "genius" - and he plays all the shots with a flourish.

He can be an uncertain starter, playing around a planted front leg with hard hands, but once in he is destructive but a joy to watch.

Ponting scored over 1,500 runs in 2005 and three times scored twin centuries in a match.

But most people will not associate 2005 with Ponting's peerless batting. The 2005 Ashes tour got off to an inauspicious start with defeats in the Twenty20 to England and then, even worse, to lowly Bangladesh in a one-day international.

There were murmurs about Ponting's captaincy from the start of the series, and he was out-manoeuvred at almost every turn by Michael Vaughan.

Despite a match-saving 156 in the Old Trafford Test, Ponting had a modest series by his lofty standards, and without runs to back it up his captaincy appeared one-dimensional and unoriginal.

He has bounced back since - Australia have won 11 out of 12 Tests since relinquishing the urn - but his career is currently tarnished by being the first Australian skipper since 1987 to lose possession of the Ashes.

Whether Andrew Flintoff can have the same effect on Ponting as Vaughan will be decisive this winter.

If Ponting makes the giant scores he is capable of, Australia will reclaim the Ashes. If England can keep him quiet with the bat, his staid captaincy could once again come under scrutiny.